{146} my talent is cuteness

totally crossed out everything i'd written because i hated the title.

today's title comes courtesy of the youngest E. we were talking to the oldest E about being in a talent show and his talent was performing some of the moves he learned in MMAs. then we asked the youngest E what her talent would be and, without missing a beat, she answered "i think my talent would be cuteness." and then she gave a little pouty puppy-dog face. super cute. she's right. that should be her talent.


back to the project. i grabbed my camera, set it on self-timer and posed myself six times in the living room. then i ran to the computer, uploaded the photos, added in the letters (the white canvas was blank) and here i am posting it 15 minutes later.
i love today's name.

other {names}

i'm in a facebook group for 365-ers. i never post in there and i totally feel bad about it but maintaining this blog is already time-consuming enough! lol but, today i was totally honoured that the group used my 365-project as inspiration for each of them and a lot of them created different pieces of art using their name! here are just a few that i saw:

Rebecca Borowski (365 days of love) **her blog inspires me ALL the time.

Monique van Nieuwamerongen  (tabsolute.blogspot.com)

Yvonne Kettner (365freestyle zentangles)

Gina Hampen (http://wheegina.blogspot.ca/)

{145} grad ring

on this day, thirteen years ago, i graduated from high school. that's insanity. i can't believe how long it has been and yet it also feels like it really has been that long, you know? time has flown by but i've experienced so much life in that time too. let's see. what do i remember? i know that renae was my "date" for the day and she came to the banquet (good on her!). i remember going to steinbach early on in the day (why??), then going to candace's place to get my hair and make-up done by jeff. then we went to get our class photo done (where??), and then headed back to my parents' house where we took a bunch of photos individually and in groups of friends. then we changed into our robes and headed to the church for the ceremony. i walked down the aisle with brandy. i waved to my parents. while walking out of the church, i was crying. then we had the banquet (my mother gave one of the parent speeches). then we partied at the lions' club until 6:30 a.m. before heading over to j triple k for breakfast. then i slept the rest of the day. holy smokes. thirteen years.

my graduation picture. i had shoulder-length hair back then and really awful eyebrows. i got my tendrils straightened for my picture and wore my hair up. i always wore my hair up back then. and had no bangs. holy mega forehead, batman.

poufy dresses were totally in back then. maybe they still are?? who knows. if i was graduating this year, i certainly would not wear that same dress again but i still love it. it still looks beautiful. that's jess janz, chantel doerksen and stephanie brookes with me (i'm using maiden names because that's how i knew them then! lol).

my date, renae, and i. renae and i were always such super close friends growing up. all my favourite childhood memories involve her and her family. i'm glad to still be in contact with her and consider her a friend.

these were my closest friends in high school. lisa peters (on the far left) was my best friend--i was even her maid of honour when she got married. then there is amanda harder, kim penner and connie penner. i haven't seen lisa in many years, i ran into amanda actually a few months ago, i see kim occasionally around town, and i haven't seen connie in a super super long time.

richard martens was the principal at green valley at the time and louis reis was the vp.

 

at the banquet. all the grads sit on the stage in tiers so our families could stare at us. our theme was "the time of your life" and we used the green day song "i hope you've had the time of your life" as our entrance song--didn't everybody do that in 1999? i have absolutely no idea what we ate as our meal but we were given mcdonald's bibs to protect our dresses!

fitting into my grad dress again after 12 years (photo taken June 2011). i'm another 20 pounds lighter now so it might even be super large on me! can you imagine? being lighter than you were in high school? amaze-balls.

{144} beer caps

i created this name at 1:00 a.m. this morning and used my iPhone to snap each picture individually. though not a beer drinker myself, i relied on andrew, erin and steve to keep drinking in order that i could get enough caps (unfortunately, not enough beer was consumed for me to spell out my entire name using beer caps in one shot so i had to do each letter separately).

these three people are total beer experts. i sit there  nodding my head like i have any idea what they're talking about. they keep asking me to smell the beer. i say i don't want to. they say to tell them what i smell. i say i smell beer. they say that's not possible. i say it is. beer is beer to a non-beer drinker, i say. they say not all beer is really beer. i say i'm going to give all their beers zeros on ratebeer.com.

{143} flour

food again today? yup. that's how i've been rolling lately. it seems that all i think about is food lately--healthy good food that won't make me sick. i've lost 6.2 pounds in the last two weeks which is a lot but also fantastic because it means i'm finally cleansing my system of all those awful toxic foods i'd been eating for the last few months. it feels good to be rid of the toxins (and extra pounds!). sadly, i'm still two pounds overweight so i really want to get rid of at least another 6-8 pounds so i am more comfortably in the "normal" range.

anyhoo, so i made muffins just now on my lunch break. see two posts ago for the recipe. i only remembered to make my name afterwards, so i wrote my name in the spilled flour.

{142} cashews

so, today's name comes courtesy of my mid-morning snack. when i bike to work, then i find i need a little extra fuel to keep me going through the whole morning until lunch (which isn't eaten until 1:30ish). so, i broke up some of my cashews to make my name and used instagram for the picture.  now i regret using instagram because all my other pictures are 4x6s. oh, well. i'll get over it.

{141} license plate

i'm beginning to sense that on every day that there is a blue bomber game, my name will have something to do with the team. that sounds like a great idea, in fact. i shall try it out. i already have two ideas for another two blue bomber-themed names!

i was one of the originals when it comes to blue bomber license plates. in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if i was the first person in manitoba to pick up their new license plates in june 2011! i have the original blue ones  not these new fandangled gold ones. even though i like the gold plates better, i like that it shows i'm not a bandwagon jumper and i was an original trendsetter. :)

sadly, i will not be at the pre-season game tonight. i gave up my seat to my mother--even though it is supposed to rain tonight! i hope she'll be okay. i haven't missed a pre-season game in 10 years. i always go because we always get buddy seats so i take someone with me. last year, i took brant and sean with me to be seat buddies! we were going to make it an annual tradition but because our season tickets arrived so late, we never got the chance to exchange the buddy passes for tickets. oh, well. maybe we can go to a game later this season (or next year in the new stadium--fingers crossed).

super {healthy} muffins

yesterday i made super healthy muffins. they taste healthy--not very sugary--but i love them. and, it was a total bonus getting to use my pyrex mixing bowls. great food and lovely pyrex rocks. oh, and then i ate my muffin on butterfly gold corelle pyrex compatible plates!

ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups mixed frozen berries (i use blueberries, blackberries and raspberries)
1 cup soymilk
1/2 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute
4 tbsp. light whipped butter or light buttery spread, room temperature
1 single-serving container of applesauce (i use apple-cinnamon flavour)
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, Splenda, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

In a separate, large mixing bowl, combine soymilk, egg substitute, butter, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Using an electric mixer or a whisk, mix until thoroughly blended. (Don't worry if butter bits do not break up completely.)

Add dry ingredients from the first mixing bowl to the mixture in the large one. Mix until completely blended. Then fold in the berries. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with baking liners or spray with nonstick spray. Evenly distribute batter among the 12 cups. Place in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. MAKES 12 SERVINGS

(slightly adapted from this hungry-girl.com recipe--i doubled it, omitted the sugar and used mixed berries)

{140} tealicious jewelry

is it jewelry or jewellery? hmmm. spell check likes both.

teal is my most favourite colour. i have a whole board on pinterest devoted to the colour. teal is my favourite jewelry colour, eyeshadow colour, shirt colour, everything colour. and, yet, i don't have any teal rooms in my house. shall get on that asap!

in my jewelry closet (yes, i have a closet) i have a whole wall devoted to all teal jewelry. they are always my go-to pieces. so, i thought i'd do my name with some of them today!

the piece below i received from erin after she and andrew returned from russia and i had house-watched for them while they were away. she presented it to me following a football game at the tim hortons on kenaston (i remember everything!). it's so gorgeous. definitely one of my faves.

the piece below i received from a. eleanor after she did an ESL trip to the ukraine several years ago. i love this one too. i think i probably wear this piece the most out of all my teal jewelry because it hangs at just the right height. :)

{139} killing time on the computer

killing time on the computer lead to this. after posting this name i realized it looked completely and totally screwy on my blog. so i screen-printed my draft so that it was proof that it, at one point, looked like my name! lol

LL                AAA            UUU         UUU      RRRRRRRRR   EEEEEEEE   NN       NN
LL             AA   AA         UUU         UUU      RRR         RR     EEE                NNN   NN
LL            AA      AA         UU          UU         RRR        RR      EEE               NNN    NN
LL           AAAAAAA        UU         UU          RRRRRRR        EEEEEE        NNNNNN
LL          AA           AA         UU     UU           RRR    RR          EEE               NN    NNN
LL         AA             AA         UU   UU            RRR      RR        EEE                NN     NN
LLLLL AA               AA          UUU                RRR        RR     EEEEEEEEE NN       NN

{138} father's day

today's post comes courtesy of my dad! my mom made my name on mother's day so it was only fitting for my dad to make my name on father's day! can't wait to share the results of his hard work!

given my recent successes with golf (*wink! see day 136), my dad decided to create my name using golf balls! he even had to go to canadian tire to get another bag of golf balls just to do this--i'm so proud of him! AND, he came up with this idea himself--no help from my mom. i'm so super proud of him.

he is the greatest father ever. he is ALWAYS my number one fan. he is my number one supporter. he is my number one encourager. he always has the right advice for me (even if i don't always listen to it). he is my hero in every way that a daughter wishes her dad could be. i don't know how any other dads can live up to him. he has taught me right from wrong. he has taught me the value of family and faith. he's an incredible grandfather and still acts like he's a kid with them. he is always an example to his children and his family of how to handle situations with class, dignity and respect. he has earned crazy amounts of respect among people in this community (this daughter is super proud of him). he lets me make mistakes and then doesn't hold them against me. he tells the lamest jokes ever. he knows a lot of random stuff (like who invented the vaccination for smallpox). he kills all the spiders in the house that i scream about (he even shows up at 11:30pm to kill the big ones that gross me out too much). he takes me to all the blue bomber games i want. he helps me by taking care of george on days i cannot. he even says things like it is an honour being my father. he always tells me that he loves me. he is truly amazing. he is the best dad in the whole entire history of the world. no question. love love love him.

{137} tattoo

first of all, is it tatoo or tattoo? i'm the world's foremost expert on spelling but there are still words that totally get me hung up like that. drives me nuts.

since i was golfing yesterday i didn't have a chance to check out the summer in the city action. so, today carrie and braved the very dark clouds and went towards the downtown for the annual festival. it was sunny and then not sunny. hot and then not hot. rainy and then not rainy. windy and then not windy. i was very confused on how i should be dressed the whole day. but, we had a great time. checked out all the vendors and got to hear a lot of great musical acts. topped off by one spectacular rain shower that drenched us during the ukranian dancers' routine. all in all, it was a fantastic day.

carrie and i have a history of always getting henna tattoos when we go to different festivals (we've also frequented harbourfest in kenora and the morden corn and apple festival). this time though she sat out but did give me the best idea ever--get my name henna tattooed! brilliant idea!

i asked the very kind woman if she would do that for me and she said sure! i spelt out my name and she wrote it. i love it. now the cake-iness is all worn off and the colour is starting to darken. unfortunately this means that i'm going to have to wear my suit jacket all week to hide it, though. :) great day with friends! erin and cara, you guys did an AMAZING job coordinating the cultures in the city. awesome awesome.

{136} golf tee

in just a few minutes i'm leaving to golf in the bethesda foundation golf tournament. i'm pretty stoked. it's actually my first golf game of the year! i'm not a very good golfer but i sure enjoy being outdoors and just playing the game. i find it so relaxing and enjoyable!

update: the tournament (not "tournmanet" as originally spelt) was totally awesome. i golfed with steve and the mix 96 team and had such a total blast. the weather was completely perfect and i even golfed okay. okay enough to win the ladies' longest drive award!! boo ya! ;) i liked that my one good drive happened on a hole that counted. :) it was a great day. i also loved that my dad was at the dinner afterwards and could brag to his friends that his daughter won that award. :)

for today's name, i simply took one of my golf tees and wrote my name on it. i tried to write it on the tip of the tee but that didn't quite work out. ;)

{135} key chain

today was the bombers' first pre-season game and...they won! they beat montreal 22-10. yippee! i know that pre-season games don't mean squat but i'm still totally stoked to see them start off the season like this.

last year, i bought this key chain at the bomber store. in fact, all my key chains are blue bomber related! lol

(super busy life right now...am forced to rely on items with my name on them instead of creating new ones!)

{134} onions are my favourite food

it's true. onions are my favourite food. i can eat them with everything or just on their own. i eat them raw or cooked or fried or anything. i just love them. so, i was making some of my healthy healthy soup again and decided to use the onions as inspiration. i had taken a picture of me wearing my goggles as i chopped the onions too but somehow that picture got lost. but, i do love me some onions.

{132} magnifying glass

more sherlock! i just can't help myself. :)

{131} playlist

it took me a short while to figure out how to get these songs to appear in the playlist in the correct order so that they'd spell out my name. finally, i figured out that if i rated them each from highest to lowest according to the letters in my name and then sorted them by the rating, that they'd line up properly! i'd like to include more music in my blog anyway. like, perhaps always including which song i'm listening to as i'm blogging. i remember that myspace used to allow that and it's something missing from facebook that i wish we could get too.

ps. as you can tell by the artists, i greatly prefer listening to female artists over male ones. there are a few rare exceptions (like darren criss or jack johnson) but i prefer female artists because i can sing along with them. :)

{130} movies

crap. i'm just realizing that i called this post "movies" but the first picture is not a movie...it's a tv show. oh, crap. well, i'm gonna leave it as is. i thought to myself "oh, this will be easy! take a picture of six dvds that start with the letters of my name." well, who knows of a movie that starts with a "u" other than "u571"?? so, i got creative and decided to use the word "you" from one of my favourite movies, "you've got mail."

"apollo 13" is my favourite movie of all time. i've seen it well over 150 times and own FIVE copies of it (3 dvds, a vhs, and a digital version), two copies of the book (one in hardcover, one in original paperback), and three soundtracks (cassette, cd, digital). yup, i love it. i hope to include it in this proejct more but i haven't figured out that balance quite yet. so, until i do that, i shall hold back just how i became obssessed with the movie and where it's taken me.

{CJOB} radio interview

Well, I just did my first radio interview about my project! That was exciting. I had understood that the interview would take place on June 22 so I wasn't even thinking or planning what I'd say yet so I was TOTALLY caught off guard. But, it went great and I really enjoyed it.

So, I'm just sitting on the couch watching TV and the phone rings. Blah. Don't recognize the number. Then it calls again and again. Finally, I'm, like, 'you don't think it could be CJOB, do you?' So, I answered the phone and it was the producer saying that I would be on right away! I was SO surprised and panicked and nervous but I said "Yeah, I mean I'm not ready, but I'll go for it." And, it was great.

So, the show is called "Your Life...Unlimited" hosted by Stephanie Staples. She was fantastic and totally put me at ease immediately (especially since I was unprepared). She asked some questions about what my project is and how far I am and what is the most difficult part of the project and what my most creative name has been. It was fun. Now I just need to find a way to download that audio file to share it and save it.

Super cool! If you're reading this Stephanie...thanks! It was great!

{129} barren tree

i've attempted to draw this barren tree before but then i got carried away with it and totally messed it up. today, i decided to try again. rather than colour it in and add leaves (which is what was my downfall last time), i decided to leave it at just a simple pencil drawing instead.

in hindsight, it's looking a little sad. oh, well. that's the challenge with this project--some days are just simply going to be much more ambitious and others are going to be half-hearted because it has been a long day or i'm up early or i'm running late or i simply don't want to colour any more! what an incredible challenge this project has been. i'm already thinking about next year's project--i totally think i know what i'm going to do but...i still have 238 days to decide.

{128} 99 cents

my name is only worth a total of $5.94 or 99 cents per letter. that's at least according to michaels pricing on some of the small wooden letters that you can pick up. if only i was willing to spend six dollars on each name (have you done the math? that would total over $2,100 over the course of the year). i have spent, obviously, some money on some of the names but a dollar a letter would pretty much be my maximum--unless it's pretty spectacular (like name #365 will be---that'll cost me at least $25. can't wait for that day to arrive cuz it's gonna be awesome!).

{127} key and (sher)lock

i've been doing a lot of reading abot sherlock holmes. actually, "a lot" would be an understatement. it's all i do, it seems. cara (who totally rocks because i tag her in my posts all the time) gave me the complete works of sherlock holmes and i can't put it down. in the one week since she gave it to me, i've read two complete novels and am half-way through one of the short-story books. it is so good.

so, while reading outside i felt compelled to do a name with sherlock in mind. i tried for awhile to do something cool with a pipe or something sherlock-ian but finally i settled on a key (which unlocks things) and put his name and address on it. more sherlock posts to come!

pyrex

for all my followers (because there are so many of you. *sarcasm), it is worth it to know that i do guest post for the Pyrex Collective on occasion. today i wrote a post about a possible first set of mine called the primary collection. i had been mis-labelling it all these months so i am (potentially, if it's true) very excited.

{126} leaves

why is it that when i decide to turn to nature for my inspiration, the name never comes out quite as i'd expected (see #90). i thought it'd be neat to cut the letters out of six leaves that were still attached to the tree. but my first few attempts were total fails because i kept accidentally snipping the whole leaf off the branch. finally, i was left with an okay version that i was going to settle for.

my flowers are all planted for the year and i just love tending to them. i wish i had an actual garden so that i could putter away in there every evening but for now my pots of flowers will need to suffice. i just love to dead-head and water and arrange them nicely. then i totally got carried away yesterday and suddenly i'm cutting down branches and weeding behind my fence and just going nuts! i always get these spurts of energy that make me feel like i could life a car. :)

{125} paint swatch

my house is eleven different colours so, naturally, i have a lot of different paint swatches left over (can't throw them away because i knew they'd have a purpose some day!). i wasn't quite sure how i wanted to use them and perhaps they'll get used in another way on another day but today i just used my x-acto knife and cut letters out of one such swatch.

so, about these eleven colours...here they are: entrance-yellow, kitchen-red, dining room wall-green, bathroom-brown, office-beige, craft room-pink, bedroom-black and blue, main areas-white, living room-purple and beige (a different beige). now, i do need to confess that my living room has since changed to two different shades of blue, white, red and beige and the dining room wall is now white but it's still a lot of colour that i'm left with. when i bought this house i was so excited to just paint everything--it was all beige except for the kitchen which was an ugly green. i love my house so super much. AND, i love to paint!

dye, hair! dye!

Dear Hair: Be prepared to dye. I thought we had a deal. I promised to keep you current with a funky cut and you promised to keep the grey away. You betrayed me. Seemingly overnight you sought your revenge on the sides of my head. Dye, hair! Dye!

I just posted the above message to my hair on Facebook but it was worth permanently documenting on my blog as well. What is up with the grey?! I only turned 30 six months ago and as I was passing by the mirror in my entrance, I got a glimpse of just how awful the grey had become on the sides of my head! I'd noticed a few grey strands over the last few  weeks but it didn't bother me. But, I guess the lighting in my entrance is different and I suddenly saw what the rest of the world must've been seeing! Why didn't anyone tell me?! It's awful. My mom didn't get grey hair till she was much older and even now, at 67, she barely has any. This is awful. My nearly 37-year-old brother doesn't even have grey! What am I to do? Thank goodness I had a spare box of dye under the bathroom sink that has saved me from this travesty. Oi oi oi.

{124} camouflage

today i decided to grab a piece of paper, my pail of pencil crayons and head outside. so, for a good 40 minutes i sat on my lounge chair colouring today's name in a camouflage print.

i started off by just free-handing the letters of my name first and then i grabbed two other pencil crayons and started drawing these shapes. it was a whole lot of drawing and colouring and my hand was totally cramping afterwards. just using the word "hand" again is making me appreciate so much what my hands are capable of. they are the mediums that i use to create. reminds me of a quote: "i craft because my hands get jealous of all the work my brain does." true story. :)

{123} the avengers

so, last night i went to see "the avengers" with my good friend cara. i'm not into these superhero-type movies but i wanted to see it because it's, like, the biggest movie of all time. at first when i heard the movie was coming out, i thought "there's a movie i'll never watch" because i remembered that when "x-men" came out six years ago, i went to see it only because the guy i was dating at the time was totally into that sort of thing. i spent the entire movie going "huh?" and walked out of it even more confused then before it started (kinda like how the relationship ended too). rabbit trail! anyway, i prefer funny movies and light-hearted comedies or the occasional drama but action is just not my thing. like, the final two harry potter movies are about as much as i can take. but...

i really enjoyed "the avengers". i'm not going to go all marvel (side note: my nephew completely annihilated me when i pronounced it mar-vell instead of marvel, like marble but with a 'v') because of it, but it was a good movie and had enough funny moments to carry me through. plus, it totally had jeremy renner in it and he is totally smokin' hot. love!

anyway, back to the whole name thing. at first i was going to hand draw my name and incorporate the avengers logo but i thought twice about all that work and decided to just download a free avengers font instead. then came the "lauren" in place of the marvel logo and finally the cherry on top was a gratuitous picture of jeremy renner as hawkeye. yes, please.

{122} fingerprints

my finger was green for two days after this one. i drew my name out in pencil on this piece of paper and then followed it afterwards with my green fingerprint.